The Democrats’ Abortion-palooza

Except you took out, on the issue of abortion, you took out language from previous platforms that said it should be safe, legal and rare. And I think this Democratic Convention was really over the top in terms of abortion. Every single speaker talked about abortion. And you know at some point you start to alienate people. 30 percent of Democrats are pro-Life.

Will Democrats pay a price for pitching to the base at the expense of moderates? Probably not, because undecided voters are unlikely to have tuned in for speech after speech outside of prime time. Bill Clinton was the pitch man for that voter. He did a genius job at breaking down the economic argument for Obama, too, and thankfully did not present himself as a friend of womankind.

Even the tribute to Teddy Kennedy, who for many years considered himself pro-life, was used to drive home the ubiquitous abortion rights theme, via footage of the ’94 senatorial debate in which Kennedy called Romney “multiple choice” on the issue. A tireless advocate for the dispossessed, Kennedy was so much more than that — and his party used to be, too.

Good grief, such a knee-jerk piece as this stands in jarring contrast to the thinking conservatism expressed elsewhere on this site. Anti-choice fanatics are not moderates and they are not thoughtful conservatives. They are advocates of intrusion of state power into the personal sphere. They are owed no deference and no apologies. The Democratic Party has belatedly woken up to that reality.

Obama’s policy is far closer to the majority position on abortion then the Romney position. His five point convention bounce would seem to support this pretty clearly. The fact that Obama is polling a head of Romney and likely going to win re-election is also a pretty clear indication that all these offended voters are not moving the race in the direction these pearl clutters are predicting.

Don’t you think it is just possible that some of this has to do with the vastly heightened rhetoric of the right, which calls women sluts for wanting contraception and whores for being raped? It seems slightly odd to note the ramping up of Democratic language about abortion without mentioning any of the larger context, even if you approve of the larger context. The reality is that reproductive issues are deeply on the table – and the Democrats weren’t the only ones who put them there.

I’m a pro-choice (for religious reasons – Judaism is very clear that abortion is not murder, and permissable in some contexts, while also undesirable in all contexts) leftist that dislikes intensely the reframing of abortion as normative and without cost. But I do not see it as a single shift without context, and I find it odd anyone would.

“A tireless advocate for the dispossessed, Kennedy was so much more than that — and his party used to be, too.”

To me, the dispossessed include people whose control over their own bodies, about the always difficult and sometimes dangerous issues of pregnancy and childbirth, is taken away from them and given into the hands of rabid misogynists like the Tennessee legislature.

Don’t you think it is just possible that some of this has to do with the vastly heightened rhetoric of the right, which calls women sluts for wanting contraception and whores for being raped? It seems slightly odd to note the ramping up of Democratic language about abortion without mentioning any of the larger context, even if you approve of the larger context. The reality is that reproductive issues are deeply on the table – and the Democrats weren’t the only ones who put them there.

Excuse me? What was Sandra Fluke doing there at Capitol Hill? She didn’t just want contraception, she demanded it be free, paid for by a Catholic institution. If she really wants to have control over her own body, she can stop having sex with willing males or kindly pay for her own damn pills.

And what did the Democrats do with this ridiculous narcissist? They paraded her at their national convention to deliver some demagoguery. It’s all so stomach-turning.

Obama’s policy is far closer to the majority position on abortion then the Romney position.

There is no “majority position” in this country on abortion. There are four broad categories: abortion on demand (no restrictions, public subsidies), which typically polls at about 20-25%; “typical” (first-trimester) abortions legal, but with restrictions on less common circumstances (e.g. partial-birth), garnering about 30% of the public; most abortions illegal, with some exceptions for “hard” cases (e.g. rape), 25-30%; and then no abortions, no exceptions, 15-20%.

Most Americans do not want to see abortion banned totally, but neither do most oppose any and all restrictions, or favor paying for abortions with their taxes (the Hyde Amendment was enacted by a Congress with a nearly two-thirds Democratic majority).

And you know at some point you start to alienate people. 30 percent of Democrats are pro-Life.

Anybody who was going to leave the Democratic Party over abortion has long since left. The pro-lifers who stick around in the party do so because of economic issues and/or tribal solidarity.

Every year, on the National Day of Prayer, my (largely white and affluent) church has a joint service at a large black church, which I have attended the last four years. Every time that I have been in attendance, black ministers have riled up the crowd with denunciations of abortion and homosexual marriage (among other immoralities). But really, how many of those black Baptist church ladies vote GOP? Fewer than 700,000 black people in the entire United States voted for John McCain four years ago. A similar story can be told of rosary-clutching Catholic Democrats from run-down mill towns in New England to Mexican barrios to the old ethnic neighborhoods of Rust Belt cities.

The pro-choice factions in both parties are wealthy, university-educated, and well-organized. Pro-life Democrats are none of these things. Pro-life Republicans are mostly not the first two, though one can fairly say that they are the third.

[There is no “majority position” in this country on abortion. There are four broad categories: abortion on demand (no restrictions, public subsidies), which typically polls at about 20-25%; “typical” (first-trimester) abortions legal, but with restrictions on less common circumstances (e.g. partial-birth), garnering about 30% of the public; most abortions illegal, with some exceptions for “hard” cases (e.g. rape), 25-30%; and then no abortions, no exceptions, 15-20%.]

In terms of this post, which is focused on the electoral damage Obama’s policy might do, you are looking at the wrong question. 57% of people are in favour of the status quo or want more liberal access. Only 28% want more restrictions.

Obama’s policy is far closer to the majority position on abortion then the Romney position. His five point convention bounce would seem to support this pretty clearly. The fact that Obama is polling a head of Romney and likely going to win re-election is also a pretty clear indication that all these offended voters are not moving the race in the direction these pearl clutters are predicting.

Steve says:
September 10, 2012 at 8:16 am

Someone that endorses federal funding of abortions, partial-birth abortion, and even could not bring himself to vote for the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act is far, far from the mainstream position.

Well, these two can’t BOTH be right, can they? I think Noah has it about right, and Mont.D has applied Noah’s data correctly to the likely impact on the election.

I’m wondering what “home” Dan Berger is edging his way out TO…

Me, I’m constitutionally pro-choice, support the full exercise of free speech by the pro life movement, definitely loyal to the Second Amendment, vote Democratic because the Republicans are ludicrous, decline to affiliate as a Democrat, because the leadership is cowardly, spineless, afraid of their own shadow, and obsessed with irrelevancies like gay marriage. I don’t care if a legislative majority think they can get re-elected after licensing same-sex couples. I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it. I just find political narcissism annoying, and misconstruction of constitutional principles annoying.

So, Dan, is there a viable third party to move to? I’m waiting for the second coming of Eugene Debs, but I’m not holding my breath.

15-20% for an abortion ban is probably closer to the truth these days. The oldest and most conservative cohorts in the Party are really shrinking fast- be that to the graveyards or the GOP (same difference).

Let’s not forget the roles of a dozen or more Republican state legislatures, Mr. Andrew Breitbart, Dallas socialite/political activist Nancy Brinker, and Representative Todd Akin in this. They must have believed that the polls showing 65-70% support for upholding Roe were some sort of fraud and phenomenon of false consciousness.

Well, there does seem to have been false consciousness. Just not on the side they figured it was.

Well the author of the article simply cannot read polls and has never even looked at election results. The fact is that except for the zealots on both sides, the voting public cares even less about abortion than it does about Afghanistan unless if feels threatened–by pro lifers. And then it votes for Democrats.

Charles writes: “The Democrats are on the winning side on this.” Well, until the TFR of the Democrats drops way, way below replacement level, which all that free birth control and federally-funded abortion will “help” with. There are African-American pro-life groups which refer to abortion as “black genocide,” and given the numbers, it’s sort of hard to argue with the term.

By the time Americans begin to view the wholesale destruction of the lives of human beings yet to be born with the kind of horror with which a civilized people ought to see such an atrocity, it may already be too late for some demographic groups.

[There are African-American pro-life groups which refer to abortion as “black genocide,”]

And yet almost the entire black population in the United States the will vote democratic in the upcoming election as the majority of them have for the last 50 years. As will a significant number of Catholics. So however pro-life groups choose to phrase it the vast majority of people understand it as hyperbola. Just like the abortion is murder tag line.

Because face it, if people truly believe abortion is murder and abortion in the black community is equal to genocide their reaction makes them monsters.

There are African-American pro-life groups which refer to abortion as “black genocide,” and given the numbers, it’s sort of hard to argue with the term.

This is the kind of hyperbole that could only be indulged in by people who live in “white” suburbs, and/or “black” people who like to be different by hanging around “conservative white people.” I’m not opposed to social mixing — I have a congenital melanin deficiency myself, and I spend a lot of time around large numbers of children who are various darker shades of brown.

My point is, I know that there are a whole lot of “black babies” being born, and that nobody has driven a woman of dark complexion to a clinic by force of arms, except an occasional boyfriend or two, which is a different crime from genocide. Its more common in local headlines that some unmarried man who never took responsibility kills his latest girlfriend, and her live children, because she aborted “my baby,” whom he had no intention of supporting.

It is pathetically easy to debunk this “black genocide” line. You just have to have an on the ground familiarity with how this “genocide” is SOOOOO not happening.

According to an NYT article from earlier this year, while abortion rates are down in 2012, black women have abortions at *five times* the rate of white women and twice the rate of Hispanic women. That known pro-life group (ha!) the CDC reported in 2008: “…non-Hispanic black women had the highest abortion rates (33.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) and ratios (472 abortions per 1,000 live births).”

Now, maybe you don’t consider 472 dead African-American unborn children per every 1000 live births to be anything like genocide, because you (as I know from our many fruitless debates on this subject) think that “personhood” is magically infused the moment the full fetus has emerged from her mother’s body, and not a second before. But I know African-American women who are seriously alarmed about this statistic, even though to those who share your view of abortion it means nothing more than, say, the number of teeth pulled in a population, or something.

being called a slut, a whore, a prostitue by right wing zealots who had appeared before Congress a few weeks earlier represented by allegely celibate while make pedophilia enablers wagging the dog furiously and who have, oddly enough, no objections to insurance pays for *their* little blue pills.

There’s something important in Sharon and Amos’s comments earlier that needs to be amplified: the Democratic party platform language change — which happened 4 years ago, didn’t it? Can someone tell me why this seen as particularly timely? — needs to be understood as a response to a great many pro-life successes in restricting access to abortion. The “rare” in that slogan “safe, legal, and rare” was meant originally to serve as a possible shared focus point across the lines here, in terms of an increased emphasis on preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. But the right hasn’t turned out to have much interest in that, and instead the language of rarity ended up giving extra political cover to those attempts to restrict access. In terms of the actual _policies_ themselves, there’s not been any big shift here at all, beyond the idea that the abortion should be covered for low-income women. I understand why that policy would be opposed by pro-lifers, just as I understand why they would support any restrictions to access that they can get put in place. But the idea that this represents some radical recent shift within the Democratic part is simply & obviously false.

Nope — not one that I’d join, anyhow; the Libertarians don’t do too badly in local politics, but they’re pretty much the opposite of what I stand for. Lack of a viable American CSU is not a good excuse to stay with the Dems, though. If everybody thinks like that, nothing along that line will ever get done.

Eric, tho whole notion of life beginning at conception is a medieval notion of developmental biology that has been discredited.

You wouldn’t think the high abortion rate for black women would have something to do with them hanging on by their economic toenails in situations that are socially and economically unsupportive of child-rearing, would you? If the patriarchs of black communities want to lower the rate of abortions among black women, fostering economically and socially nurturing environments for women who choose to have children is the issue they need to address first.

This thread is probably more or less dead now, but nonetheless I only just noticed the really dishonest bit in the Henneberger column about Kennedy. I mean, the man was _very_ pro-choice for the majority of his career in the senate, and his line about “multiple-choice Mitt” was rather obviously included not because it was about abortion per se, but because it was a great zinger he got off in his debate with Romney (en route to utterly trouncing him in the general election).

I don’t know why so many folks are so invested in making the Dems out to have made a big shift on this issue, but when they’re down to making distortions like these, you know that the facts are just not on their side.

Please Erin, keep the apples separate from the oranges. An individual human being may or may not exist from the moment of conception, abortion may or may not be murder, but all murders are not genocide.

I’m well aware that there are pro-life Americans of African descent — a fair number are good friends of mine. I’ve also seen video clips where some clueless pro-life white chick falls all over herself rambling about what an honor it is to be putting a microphone in the face of a niece of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., and almost forgets what question she wanted to ask.

But no, the “black genocide” phrase doesn’t come from “the African American community,” because there is no such entity. Only a self-consciously “white” advocate for a cause, who had no personal experience with the diversity of opinion and life among Americans of African descent would make such a claim. I bet it was concocted in a brain storming session by three ostentatiously “conservative” black public relations executives and a similar handful of “white” pro-lifers going gaga about what a splash their campaign was going to make.

Let’s see, 472 abortions per 1000 live births means less than one third of pregnant black women opt for abortion, and more than two thirds of these pregnancies result in a live birth. I certainly don’t call that genocide. I call it population growth.

When I ride my bicycle down a street where most residents are Americans of African descent, and no longer see five or six children hanging out on every second or third porch, I will begin to worry about “Silence of the Lambs.” When all the faces at the Boys and Girls Club, all the Little Brothers and Sisters, all the high school students signed up for tutoring (many with babies or one on the way) are uniformly “white,” I’ll wonder where the next generation of African Americans might be.

More important, when soldiers round up women with dark complexions and march them to clinics for mandatory abortions, I will worry about genocide. As long as individual women are choosing (mostly in the first trimester) not to carry their pregnancy to term, I would not think of calling their individual choice anything like genocide.

As things stand, that slogan is a cheap public relations stunt, and its falling flat on its face, as is only right.

Thirdeye, while I agree with your second paragraph, the history of when human life begins is more complex than you present. The notion of quickening, of a time after conception when the pregnancy “comes to life” is medieval, as is the notion that it takes forty days before “ensoulment.”

To give the pro-life argument its due, most abjure ensoulment as an issue, and rely on modern cellular biology to claim that “life begins at conception.” But its not a very good argument.

Nature plays a numbers game: sperm may or may not find an egg, most will die even if one breaks inside, fertilized zygotes may or may not embed in the uterine lining… and a rudimentary circulatory system is far from the defining characteristic that distinguishes a human being from a tadpole.

I wouldn’t bother to argue against pro-life positions, if they would back off the preoccupation with enlisting the police powers of The State to coerce the individual woman who must carry the pregnancy to term. But they won’t let go of that unacceptable demand, so I denounce them whenever propaganda for that purpose comes up.

Shorter Siarlys: it’s fine that one of every three black babies dies from “choice.”

And…medieval biology? Dude, please educate yourself about embryology. The fertilized ovum is three things: alive, human, and a unique genetic individual. All that is added between conception and birth are a few months and a few good meals. It’s not like the embryo “evolves” from a zygote to a fish to a bird to a generic mammal to a baby (once she is actually born) like the superstitious pro-choice people seem to think she does. Again, I recommend the non-partisan Endowment for Human Development for some basic human biology lessons:

The argument that an unborn child isn’t really alive or human or something and thus can be killed with impunity is SO late 1980s. Take a cue from Siarlys: the current vogue is to claim that some unborn children may be alive and human and all, but it’s still fine to kill them. Killing small dependent humans who happen to be their own biological children is good for women–didn’t you know?

I know you mean well here, but that’s really a very inaccurate representation of this organization. It’s “non-partisan” in only the most literal sense of not being affiliated directly with any political party. But it’s completely a pro-life outfit, and should not be treated as any sort of neutral arbiter on matters of science, etc.

Someday I am going to post an article on “The Cowardice of the Pro-Life Blogger.” One and all, if you dig deep enough into relevant facts, they become allergic to further discussion and shut down. Detailing this hasn’t been an urgent priority, since the theme is so obvious.

Erin Manning, on the whole a sincere, intelligent, discerning, compassionate woman, has been driven to a prose version of the usual street corner response to being caught short and/or red-handed: a breathless rant that makes up in volume and longevity for what it lacks in substance. The idea, in both instances, is to maintain sufficient verbal momentum that nobody who knows better can get a word in edgewise.

Indeed, the fertilized ovum is alive, as is the unfertilized ovum, the free-swimming sperm, and every skin cell on my arm. Ditto for human, and yes, there is a unique genetic signature. None of that adds up to an objective case for a human being with rights that are equal to, or take precedence over, the undoubted human person inside whose body the little cells are multiplying.

The embryo doesn’t evolve, its more like a biochemical self-expanding zip file. Just as sperm have no conception of themselves or their purpose (a good thing, since most are going to die on a scale that makes “Hunger Games” look like Humanism), neither does the zygote, blastocyst or embryo.

In short, those aren’t “black babies” who die, those are tissues dependent upon a “black woman” inside her body which she may or may not allow to grow INTO a baby.

Has anyone ever wondered why pro-life billboards depict six-month-old babies, fully clothed, while talking about embryos? Its a classic form of deception, and the sponsors know it full well.